Backward Glance
From SARAH GAINHAM
BONN
GERMANY'S public year was dominated by two situations—rather than events—both of them, though serious enough, phoney : Berlin and the general election. After the .politicians had spent a quite disproportionate amount of time and trouble in the last governmental period (four years) on keeping the voters happy, the elections were affected at-the last moment by the arbitrary action of the Russians in Berlin, and the lack of any reaction from Bonn. The voters, Upset and in bad conscience over East Germany, Withdrew their unconditional support for Chan- cellor Adenauer; and the Federal Republic re- turned to the state of coalition government (but With an uncomfortably small majority this time) that it had been in for eight of its twelve years' existence. Real difference, nil; situation as before. Adenauer's Eastern policy, summed up in the Hallstein doctrine of ostracism for anyone who mentions the dirty words `East German Republic' in public, had not suddenly failed; it had never succeeded. But the public noticed for the first time that the policy was hollow, and there was a Justified feeling that somebody ought to have cared enough about the families beyond the Elbe to achieve some policy that would work. As always in politics, the people's own shortcomings took the form of resentment against the govern- ment. But the West Germans still don't care enough to evolve any new thinking about East Germany; neither are they able to adroit that it is now too late to do anything but register accomplished facts. It was a striking example of the dangers of ruling by public relations—by babying the voters: reality will keep breaking in and upsetting illusory calm.
Yet in the areas of government that have nothing to do with East Germany, where ir- rational feelings dominate policy, the year showed great advances. The West European movement towards unity increased in speed and power and began to exercise its inevitable attraction, as of a magnet oh bars of steel, on all bordering States. This development, as far as Germany is con- cerned, is largely due to one man. I.udwig Erhard. With the patience of a button-booted and cigar-smoking Job he pushes gently on with what really matters, behind the fireworks of govern- ment and party politics which claim to keep the domestic situation in balance for him! Erhard begins to emerge as a figure of Faustian pro- portions, struggling with the Mephisto of the irrational in society and trying to bring order without the regimentation which is so easily con- fused with order, and so often covers disorder. His friends tried hard to get him into the circus ring of party politics during the year; their efforts broke as much on his indifference as on their own incompetence.
As the year ended, Erhard made a quiet sug- gestion that our world should cease to act only in reaction to the `inhumane, brutal philosophy' of Communism with its `deification of the power of the State.' We should realise that our society is superior in every sense to theirs; it is no longer capitalism and nationalism, but is moving to- wards a new form of society. And this new form of society will be the reality of what the Com- munists promise their peoples, but which they do not and cannot produce because they are using false means—hatred, envy and force, which can ohly produce their own images. The first occasion (the second being in print) that Erhard made this suggestion of a new attitude to foreign policy was an historic one: when the synagogue at Worms on the Rhine—the oldest Jewish com- munity in Germany, going back to the tenth century and perhaps before—was rededicated after its rebuilding.
The tragedy of Berlin became during 1961 even more clearly no crisis of Berlin. The city remained essentially the same—justification of Erhard's criticism of the Communists' failure to justify their methods. BUt the Allies have con- tinued to be almost exclusively concerned with saving their own faces in Berlin; and of this no good can come. Negotiations cannot now im- prove Berlin's situation; whether there should or should not be negotiations at all over Berlin remained a question at the year's end. De Gaulle has loyally made the refusal to negotiate that Adenauer cannot himself make; whether they are right or wrong is also a question. It may be better to try to stabilise the status quo; on the other hand the Russians are unlikely, over Berlin, to conclude a deal they mean to keep.
The West must put some pressure on the Russians in some other way and in some other place, to save Berlin. This is happening slowly, almost unnoticed, and perhaps in spite of all the politics. Europe is making something new that is much more the concern of the Russians than Berlin—and which, typically, they hardly ever mention except to the small neighbours of their empire still not totally under their control. The Russians fear the unity of Europe not for mili- tary reasons but because it will make a new society possible. It is already being made. The faster it can be made the better can the West keep its promises to Berlin, and otter hope to Hungary and Poland and all the other millions who belong to Europe.
In Austria, without publicity or fuss, thousands of citizens of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and many more from Yugoslavia, come on private or tourist visits; the increase of this un- fashionable and sometimes, to reactionaries, unpopular traffic can do only good. They belong to Europe as much as their kinsmen in Vienna do. In spite of the clownish squabble over the South Tyrol the frontier between Austria and Italy has almost ceased to exist. The first joint frontier post between Germany and Benelux, a sinecure for customs officials, was opened in 1961. German citizens travel all over Western Europe without passports and all Western Europeans travel in and out of Germany without question. Having been out of Germany (in Vienna) for eight months of 1961, these outlines seem very clear to me. But what everybody, or almost everybody, talks about inside and out- side Germany as German is already the past. Not forgotten—never to be forgotten; but past. Eichmann, undeservedly inflated into a great administrator (anybody can move thousands of people about if it does not matter whether they live or die), is condemned as a German for crimes committed by Gefmans, by German judges who studied law in Germany; no matter what their passports say, they remain men and lawyers of German origin.
Prosperity grew still further in 1961. Houses and roads were built at phenomenal speeds; hospitals and schools, includitig universities, re- mained the Cinderellas of the increasingly affluent society here as elsewhere. Ironically, while the outside world sang the tune of.Corn- munist propaganda about German militarism, even Franz Josef Strauss's driving energy could not push the German armed forces up to their NATO commitment level—an extraordinary failure in the country where efficiency as well as 'militarism is supposed to be proverbial.
Flaws showed, too, in prosperity, here and there. A big automobile company went bank- rupt; the shipbuilding industry is worried about overreaching itself; the powerful peasant asso- ciations fought to the last hedge and ditch to save their high-priced protection on wheat prices, and failed to do so. This pleased townsmen. The Common Market reduced the prices of some im- ported goods—Italian woollen goods and French wines for instance—noticeably. Other goods stayed expensive in spite of lowered tariffs; some prices rose without reason or explanation. Coal briquettes, the means by which the majority heat their homes, rose in spite of a surfeit of coal. The most powerful trade union, the steel- workers, gave notice of demands for wage in- creases with shorter hours; there was a yelp of anguish but, to jump ahead, they will probably get their increases, for the steelmasters can afford them and the men deserve them. Vast new markets under the cant name of Development Aid for Countries Capable of Development (not underdeveloped countries, that is insulting) opened wider to the hopeful eyes of industrialists and bankers; their only problem the chronic shortage of skilled labour in Germany. where
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there are thousands of well-paid jobs that cannot b: filled and where short-term immigration is encouraged rather than dammed up, from the poorer Mediterranean peoples. For 1962 there will be Berlin and the further integration of Westem Europe. They are bound closer together than seems possible on the sur- face.
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